Eduqas A-Level Religious Studies Component 3 Ethical Thought and Deontology: a complete overview

Eduqas A-Level Religious Studies Component 3 is Religion and Ethics. Its first half (Themes 1 and 2) lays the foundations of ethics and the deontological tradition: what grounds morality (God's commands, virtuous character, conscience, reason), and the duty-based theories of natural law and proportionalism. This overview ties together the topic pages and explains how the paper is examined.

How Component 3 works

Component 3 is a two-hour written exam worth 100 marks. It has two sections: in Section A you answer one question from a choice of two, and in Section B one from a choice of three. Every question is in two parts: part (a) is worth 20 marks for AO1 (knowledge and understanding) and part (b) is worth 30 marks for AO2 (analysis and evaluation), so the larger part (b) carries more weight.

Theme 1: ethical thought

Divine command theory grounds morality in God's will and faces the Euthyphro dilemma, answered by modified divine command theory. Virtue theory (Aristotle) is agent-centred: eudaimonia, the doctrine of the mean and phronesis. Conscience sets Aquinas (synderesis and conscientia, reason) against Freud (the super-ego) and Fromm (the authoritarian and humanistic conscience). The relationship between religion and morality maps heteronomy, autonomy and theonomy, with Kant on the autonomy of ethics.

Theme 2: deontological ethics

Natural law (Aquinas) is grounded in reason and human nature: the four tiers of law, the five primary precepts, real and apparent goods, and the doctrine of double effect, applied to life and death. Proportionalism (Hoose) develops it: the distinction between moral and pre-moral (ontic) goods and evils, and the principle that a proportionate reason can justify departing from a rule, with the charge that it collapses into consequentialism.

How Component 3 is examined

• Two parts per question. Part (a) is accurate, organised exposition (AO1); part (b) is a sustained, balanced argument that reaches a justified conclusion (AO2).
• Evaluation is the lever. Because part (b) is worth 30 to part (a)'s 20, the theories must be argued and judged, not only described.